Dandelion Break Tolkien's Dragon

[Pamela Jo]

 

[LJ Beck]

I can see why you can't have a silver green knife. That just doesn't make sense. But I don't see why you can't have a French old green whittling wooden rectangular lovely little knife?

 

[CageSage]

I can see why you can't have a silver green knife. That just doesn't make sense. But I don't see why you can't have a French old green whittling wooden rectangular lovely little knife?

Because the phrase (as a hyperbaton) is 'discontinuous' - too many words added, which makes it nonsensical and vague - is the knife wood? is the wood whittling? is the knife rectangular or the wood? Use as many as needed to create a specific image, but not so many that it creates ambiguity (unless the purpose is to create the vague, the cubist, the surreal, or - as stated elsewhere: using disruption or inversion of customary word order to produce a distinctive effect, but this sounds more like anastrophe). Of course, it makes for a lot of fun when used as a form of hyperbole, eg:
The garish, green, silver-bladed, French-carved, double-sided, glittering little knife sliced right through my thumb.

Anastrophe is Yoda-speak: The late arrival's horse, the great green dragon ate
Even he (Yoda) put things in their proper - descriptive - order, just messed up the subject-verb-object order.